It's official: Comcast starts 250GB bandwidth caps October 1

[Soygen]

Infrastructure to handle the bandwidth is really what costs. The more b/w they need, the more hardware they need to purchase.

[Malakriss]

Bandwidth is the rate of data transfer, usage is the amount of data transfered. The thread title should really be "Usage cap" despite the fact that Usage is completely irrelevant, because the past usage has zero impact on the network in the present. In reality the user that hits 250GB in 2 weeks is more trouble than hitting 250GB in a full month.

Bandwidth costs money because it is limited by bottlenecks in hardware infrastructure. The bottleneck is a faucet and Comcast's faucet is an older model with not enough water flow. Instead of upgrading, they set limits on the individual flows so they can cram even more people with the same amount of resources.

To upgrade a network, almost the entirety of the hardware must be replaced by newer more expensive hardware, because if you only replace the front bottleneck, the next link in the chain becomes a new one.

[Vorph]

Originally Posted by Tuco

Anyone know statistics on how many MB's of data you download for every hour of average MMO gaming?

Just skimmed the thread and didn't see this answered: WoW is 5-10MB per hour.

[Hatorade]

Originally Posted by Vorph

Just skimmed the thread and didn't see this answered: WoW is 5-10MB per hour.

I would hit the 250GB cap by mid second week then. That is shit and if AT&T does this I am going to have to look elsewhere.

[Vorph]

Originally Posted by Hatorade

I would hit the 250GB cap by mid second week then. That is shit and if AT&T does this I am going to have to look elsewhere.

10MB per hour = 240 MB per day = 1.68GB per week. You planning to 40 box and play 24 hours a day or something?

Edit: and even that would still last almost the whole month...

[YourMom]

Originally Posted by Hatorade

I would hit the 250GB cap by mid second week then. That is shit and if AT&T does this I am going to have to look elsewhere.

Uh. By mid-2nd week, that's about 11 days.
11x24(hrs)x10MB = 2.64GB.

[Hatorade]

Originally Posted by YourMom

Uh. By mid-2nd week, that's about 11 days.
11x24(hrs)x10MB = 2.64GB.

I also download and upload torrents all night/day when I am sleeping or at work. Still with that math week and a half may be a little short but would def hit the cap before the month is over.

[Vorph]

The point is that in the grand scheme of things, the amount of bandwidth WoW uses is pretty trivial. It has to be, since you can still play it on dial-up.

[Gumpf]

As a working guy thats stuck in the apparently infamous "grid 9" or whatever they call it in Knoxville TN, this is actually good news for me. I download an occasional TV show or whatnot but am in no danger at all of hitting the cap, and there's so much traffic here when UT is in session during the school year that there's a huge slow down that I have termed Facebook lag during the evening hours. Most of it is probably just that, but I'm willing bet there's still a substantial chunk of people that just apeshit downloading everything, and if this limits that toward the end of the month, I guess thats a good thing. Makes people think a little about their use anyway. Sure as hell screws over big households though, I imagine it would be easypie to go through that with 3+ computer people.
I don't like this as a direction that things are going, but I think it benefits me in the short term, so thats something anyway.

[Hatorade]

Ha yeah I didn't even factor in the MMO/download stuff my wife does. Two comps and a laptop going usually.

[Ronne]

This impact Folding at Home I wonder?

[Lenardo]

YES, it will affect folding at home applications.

next year comcast should finish rolling out docis 3.0 hardware to most of their networks and that will help IMMENSELY with the current bottlenecks.

other than that- if you are doing 250gb of bandwidth in under 2 weeks, you need professional help.

the average person MIGHT use 5 gig a month.

a family that watches shows online MIGHT use 75gig a month

250gig a month is mindblowing to me. i NEVER have more than 5 gig downloads going more than 1-2 times a year

my typical download/upload is 500mb for an xfer of a torrent, i shut it seeding once i get somewhere between what i downloaded and double that size...

[Malakriss]

With a 250 GB usage cap every 30 days and 3 household users on the connection, that would be an average of 2.77GB a day per person. I think people underestimate the internet usage and content acquisition of the "average" individual, let alone the household or above average users.

[Phoenix]

I also download and upload torrents all night/day when I am sleeping or at work. Still with that math week and a half may be a little short but would def hit the cap before the month is over.

I'm still using ATT DSL because I refuse to give Comcast my monies. I'd love the 15mb/sec connection (not that I'd ever actually get that speed out of their shitty over-sold pipes) they offer, but fuck them and their bandwidth caps.

Even if Comcast didn't have shitty customer service and they weren't doing the whole "traffic shaping" thing and they didn't oversell their lines, this decision alone would be enough to make me switch. As it is now I am simply waiting for the first opportunity to bail, but I have to wait for either Cox or Verizon to get on the ball.

We have 3 internet users in my house. I occasionally dual box, so thats two computers playing mmo's...2 patches...I also use you tube, and download things at night when I sleep and am not home. 250 GB is nothing. Specially in the future when more and more services will be online and or streaming/HD.

All you fucking nigger pirates getting pissed off about not being able to torrent 24/7 is a good damn laugh out here.

Heres a novel solution; GO BUY THE FUCKING SHIT INSTEAD OF STEALING IT

[Hatorade]

The big man on Campus has spoken people. Stop all torrents so he can sleep at night. Oh and Torrents don't mean stealing. Yes that is what I use them for mainly but plenty of torrents are freeware.